Aliana
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Aliana
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18
The Horror Has a Name - Maybe!
Oh my God! Really?! Byc moze (Polish: maybe).....
Finding this "perfume" here is amusing and sobering at the same time!
I can answer immediately how Byc Moze smells - cheap and terrible.
And my impressions of it were formative.
I was born and raised on a blessed, paradisiacal piece of land - Sunny Beach in Bulgaria. It is exactly at the point where the foothills of the Balkan Mountains sink into the Black Sea, but also where the fertile Thracian Plain meets the coast, lining up sand dunes like pearls on a string - for dozens of kilometers. It has cliffs in the north and sand in the south, mountains and flatlands, it smelled incredibly diverse of sea and forest and swamp, of fruit and greenery, of hyacinths, lilacs, acacias, linden, salt, wild thyme, firs, roses, of herbal wine and stones, of dusty earth, of dry grasses, sun and wind. It also smelled of garbage and dung. The beach and the tourist facilities were a completely different world, smelling of sunscreen and scents that clung to Western people - exotic perfumes, detergents, cosmetics. As a child, I could distinguish the Germans from the English just by their smell!
For a very long time, it smelled in Sunny Beach and in our lives of Byc Moze (pronounced Bitch Moje - j like in Journal or Tajin).
At the tender age of 3-4, I must have smelled it for the first time, and it has haunted me to this day, in the form of aversions to other perfumes that should be galaxies away from it.... Maybe it really had other ingredients, apart from toxic waste from the rapidly developing chemical industry of the countries of the Eastern Bloc. In any case, I still smell here and there fragments that remind me of it and inevitably repel me.
Byc Moze was the highest quality option for the working communist who was trying to build a better empire, to smell ideologically conform. The noble scents from the West would not have suited her - smelling too much like beautiful things and degrading the dignity of women. Our proud mothers had to stand tall and not let themselves be perfumed by scents that could seem sensual or even seductive! Life was there to work, to serve the party! Our mothers had to be feminine in the sense of being capable of giving birth. They had to be clean to avoid causing epidemics and to smell clean to make this credible even without presenting a vaccination certificate. Anything else would be capitalist decadence, and the comrade had to turn away from it in disgust.
Byc Moze came from the socialist West and was thus the ideal solution for the slowly awakening ego of the Bulgarian woman - it was not 12 stotinki of Russian exhaust smell like Rabotnitza or Magnit, but safe light-years away from L'air du Temps, which could reduce her to a sex object by giving her a feminine aura!
Byc Moze was sold by traveling Polish traders on the black market directly from the trunk - and extremely successfully! The Poles came with their soap-dish-like orange FIATs, set up their tents at the campsite, and shortly thereafter were surrounded by fashion-conscious Bulgarians! Everything that was not freely available was traded - pseudo-modern clothing, underwear, shoes, lipsticks and cosmetics, medications, watches, hair dryers and curling irons, kettles, swimsuits, calculators, cocoa, tights, and so on.... and also the terrible Byc Moze, which seemed to have sprung from a nightmare! Even Russian, East German, Czech, and Yugoslav women strolled by as if by chance! To this day, it remains a mystery to me how our neighbors and teachers, saleswomen, and all the female tourists knew about the arrival of the Poles, especially since the campsite was really on the outskirts of Sunny Beach! However, I assume that they smelled the Byc Moze on a day’s distance with the west wind and then scraped together their savings to carefully calculate how much could be allocated to Byc Moze this year. What I thought with my child’s nose was the smell of a factory, the more experienced noses of the female part of the working class must have recognized and accepted as perfume.... How else could it be that the middle class of an entire nation smelled almost the same?! Every Bulgarian woman who held herself had a Byc Moze in her bag - as a support for her ego and proof of her sophistication!!! My mother, of course, had one too, but to be honest, I must admit that she used it as mosquito repellent and swore by its universal insecticidal effect! Otherwise, my parents believed that Byc Moze was worthy of a little girl, and I was allowed to pour it on myself and my dolls as I pleased. I was allowed to paint my dolls and my little brother with felt-tip pens and ballpoint pens, as Byc Moze removed everything afterward. My mom had a large collection of decadent perfumes that she also used, and she enjoyed receiving compliments for her fragrant aura. However, Byc Moze was also indispensable in our household; there was no better moth killer and cleaning agent. Thus, all our clothes were imbued with this scent, and it had the honor of "refining" the fragrances of Nina Ricci, Chanel, and Guerlain...
Here I will try to list the areas of application of Byc Moze:
It drove away mosquitoes and kept moths at bay. A cotton ball soaked in Byc Moze could remove stains of various origins from various surfaces and materials. With some effort, it could also remove nail polish. Kitchen cabinets shone like new, and bathroom fixtures too. Byc Moze alleviated itching and pain from insect bites, and it also proved effective as a disinfectant for abrasions. A few drops in the cleaning water made windows and mirrors shine, as well as tiles. It removed unpleasant odors from the refrigerator and the drain. After all I’ve said here, one might think that this smell hung permanently over us, like a sword of Damocles, threatening to suffocate us at any moment. But that is not the case. Because the smell was THANK GOD short-lived. After just 15-20 minutes, it was no longer detectable, and even the beginning was very, very alcoholic, with some bitter, herbal, harsh nuances in it, but nothing that was sweet-sticky and would settle permanently. It also tasted bitter; with this diverse use, it was inevitable to have tasted it as well. However, it was said to have been used like Odol by the teens who secretly smoked. I cannot confirm this rumor. And last but not least - you could not escape Byc Moze, as it was given as a gift by everyone for every occasion. So we sometimes had up to 20-30 bottles at home - in a box in the storage room.
At some point, when I was about 10-12 years old, the scent plague slowly disappeared from our lives. Whether it was no longer offered or my mom had found better home remedies, I cannot say. But only from that time on could I enjoy her perfumes - as they really smelled when they were not contaminated by Byc Moze.
But it may also be that there are still such people who mourn it - just as they idealize everything related to the good old days. Personally, I do not miss it, even if it is a part of my childhood, and I would not have given it a thought had I not discovered it here.
Finding this "perfume" here is amusing and sobering at the same time!
I can answer immediately how Byc Moze smells - cheap and terrible.
And my impressions of it were formative.
I was born and raised on a blessed, paradisiacal piece of land - Sunny Beach in Bulgaria. It is exactly at the point where the foothills of the Balkan Mountains sink into the Black Sea, but also where the fertile Thracian Plain meets the coast, lining up sand dunes like pearls on a string - for dozens of kilometers. It has cliffs in the north and sand in the south, mountains and flatlands, it smelled incredibly diverse of sea and forest and swamp, of fruit and greenery, of hyacinths, lilacs, acacias, linden, salt, wild thyme, firs, roses, of herbal wine and stones, of dusty earth, of dry grasses, sun and wind. It also smelled of garbage and dung. The beach and the tourist facilities were a completely different world, smelling of sunscreen and scents that clung to Western people - exotic perfumes, detergents, cosmetics. As a child, I could distinguish the Germans from the English just by their smell!
For a very long time, it smelled in Sunny Beach and in our lives of Byc Moze (pronounced Bitch Moje - j like in Journal or Tajin).
At the tender age of 3-4, I must have smelled it for the first time, and it has haunted me to this day, in the form of aversions to other perfumes that should be galaxies away from it.... Maybe it really had other ingredients, apart from toxic waste from the rapidly developing chemical industry of the countries of the Eastern Bloc. In any case, I still smell here and there fragments that remind me of it and inevitably repel me.
Byc Moze was the highest quality option for the working communist who was trying to build a better empire, to smell ideologically conform. The noble scents from the West would not have suited her - smelling too much like beautiful things and degrading the dignity of women. Our proud mothers had to stand tall and not let themselves be perfumed by scents that could seem sensual or even seductive! Life was there to work, to serve the party! Our mothers had to be feminine in the sense of being capable of giving birth. They had to be clean to avoid causing epidemics and to smell clean to make this credible even without presenting a vaccination certificate. Anything else would be capitalist decadence, and the comrade had to turn away from it in disgust.
Byc Moze came from the socialist West and was thus the ideal solution for the slowly awakening ego of the Bulgarian woman - it was not 12 stotinki of Russian exhaust smell like Rabotnitza or Magnit, but safe light-years away from L'air du Temps, which could reduce her to a sex object by giving her a feminine aura!
Byc Moze was sold by traveling Polish traders on the black market directly from the trunk - and extremely successfully! The Poles came with their soap-dish-like orange FIATs, set up their tents at the campsite, and shortly thereafter were surrounded by fashion-conscious Bulgarians! Everything that was not freely available was traded - pseudo-modern clothing, underwear, shoes, lipsticks and cosmetics, medications, watches, hair dryers and curling irons, kettles, swimsuits, calculators, cocoa, tights, and so on.... and also the terrible Byc Moze, which seemed to have sprung from a nightmare! Even Russian, East German, Czech, and Yugoslav women strolled by as if by chance! To this day, it remains a mystery to me how our neighbors and teachers, saleswomen, and all the female tourists knew about the arrival of the Poles, especially since the campsite was really on the outskirts of Sunny Beach! However, I assume that they smelled the Byc Moze on a day’s distance with the west wind and then scraped together their savings to carefully calculate how much could be allocated to Byc Moze this year. What I thought with my child’s nose was the smell of a factory, the more experienced noses of the female part of the working class must have recognized and accepted as perfume.... How else could it be that the middle class of an entire nation smelled almost the same?! Every Bulgarian woman who held herself had a Byc Moze in her bag - as a support for her ego and proof of her sophistication!!! My mother, of course, had one too, but to be honest, I must admit that she used it as mosquito repellent and swore by its universal insecticidal effect! Otherwise, my parents believed that Byc Moze was worthy of a little girl, and I was allowed to pour it on myself and my dolls as I pleased. I was allowed to paint my dolls and my little brother with felt-tip pens and ballpoint pens, as Byc Moze removed everything afterward. My mom had a large collection of decadent perfumes that she also used, and she enjoyed receiving compliments for her fragrant aura. However, Byc Moze was also indispensable in our household; there was no better moth killer and cleaning agent. Thus, all our clothes were imbued with this scent, and it had the honor of "refining" the fragrances of Nina Ricci, Chanel, and Guerlain...
Here I will try to list the areas of application of Byc Moze:
It drove away mosquitoes and kept moths at bay. A cotton ball soaked in Byc Moze could remove stains of various origins from various surfaces and materials. With some effort, it could also remove nail polish. Kitchen cabinets shone like new, and bathroom fixtures too. Byc Moze alleviated itching and pain from insect bites, and it also proved effective as a disinfectant for abrasions. A few drops in the cleaning water made windows and mirrors shine, as well as tiles. It removed unpleasant odors from the refrigerator and the drain. After all I’ve said here, one might think that this smell hung permanently over us, like a sword of Damocles, threatening to suffocate us at any moment. But that is not the case. Because the smell was THANK GOD short-lived. After just 15-20 minutes, it was no longer detectable, and even the beginning was very, very alcoholic, with some bitter, herbal, harsh nuances in it, but nothing that was sweet-sticky and would settle permanently. It also tasted bitter; with this diverse use, it was inevitable to have tasted it as well. However, it was said to have been used like Odol by the teens who secretly smoked. I cannot confirm this rumor. And last but not least - you could not escape Byc Moze, as it was given as a gift by everyone for every occasion. So we sometimes had up to 20-30 bottles at home - in a box in the storage room.
At some point, when I was about 10-12 years old, the scent plague slowly disappeared from our lives. Whether it was no longer offered or my mom had found better home remedies, I cannot say. But only from that time on could I enjoy her perfumes - as they really smelled when they were not contaminated by Byc Moze.
But it may also be that there are still such people who mourn it - just as they idealize everything related to the good old days. Personally, I do not miss it, even if it is a part of my childhood, and I would not have given it a thought had I not discovered it here.
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